The Interior Department generally prefers to focus it's resources on adding species to the Endangered Species List. But, part of the mandate of the Endangered Species Act requires the designation of critical habitat, and when the Interior Department gets sued over it, it generally loses.

So, we have another lawsuit now to designate habitat the San Bernardino and San Jacinto mountains.

The CBD and CNPS claim that these flowers appear nowhere else on earth other than right here in our local mountains (I know, it's redundant), and they deserve to be protected with a critical habitat designation. The USFWS wants to move on to new species.

Possible solutions: more money to the USFWS or revamp the law. But it seems a waste to file a suit to force the government to follow the law. Isn't that what it's supposed to do anyway?